Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
Your first question comes from the line of David Glick – Buckingham Research Group
David Glick – Buckingham Research Group
I was wondering if you could give us at least some color on how you see the year progressing from a comp store basis and any color you can give us on earnings. Obviously if you look at your comp run rate in the fourth quarter and maybe that was distorted by the 53rd week, maybe you can shed some color on losing the first week of November in the fourth quarter, but what gives you the confidence that the run rate can improve from Q4 and February’s rate into ’08 and how do you see that playing out.
Keith Plowman
What I see David is that if you really look at the shifted weeks in the fourth quarter we actually on a shifted week basis in the fourth quarter actually down 1.9%. If you look at the whole fall on a shifted week basis we were down 2.4% and we think that that’s achievable numbers on a 1% to 2% decrease that we’re forecasting here for the 2008 period.
David Glick – Buckingham Research Group
Okay great, that’s very helpful to give us the unshifted.
Keith Plowman
We’re also indicating up the first quarter last year was actually our best performance on a shifted comp basis so we’re up against those tougher numbers right now. They actually get weaker in the second quarter and in the third quarter.
David Glick - Buckingham Research
Great and Tony can you give us some more color on some of these exclusive brands and in the moderate world clearly that’s one of toughest zones throughout the department store industry, are you looking at some of these brands as a growth opportunities over the levels that you were at least in terms of volume rates that you were running before since you’ll have them exclusively, can you give us some idea of how aggressive you’re going to be.
Tony Buccina
Yes, we’re expecting significant volume increases in one, our own brand that we actually decided to do when our moderate update resource structure was in turmoil with Liz and Jones selling many of these brands and I actually, to be honest with you, like what I see happening in both Li & Fung with them producing the JH Collectibles line. I think its fresher, I think it’s a better value and they’re doing a better job with it than Liz did and I also see the same thing with Evan Piccone. You got the current Jones Apparel design staff actually, Suzie Rieland and her team working with us on that and if you look at our franchise businesses, actually we actually outperformed the store and that whole business for us which we track was under siege. We actually had very little receipts from the Jones brands as well as the Evan Piccone brands in the fourth quarter. We were winding that down and in the spring we actually are almost dark on the Evan Piccone brand and JH produced by William Fung will start hitting us in the July/August period. So I think that’s, we want to move our moderate business to a younger, more affordable customer and we think that these guys as well as our own brand are going to do the job much better than had been done before.
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